April Snowstorm Already Impacting Youth Sports

Northwoods Park is home to Brooklyn Park’s youth baseball program. The baseball teams set their rosters last weekend and coaches started to schedule practice. Mother Nature had other plans.

“Everyone was all excited to get this baseball season started,” said Brian Oxborough, president of the Brooklyn Park Baseball Association. “[The] city released the fields to be practiced on, starting [Tuesday], and then the storm is going to set things back for us.”

The fields were in good shape Wednesday morning before the snow started falling. In order to accommodate baseball practices, the coaches need the dirt to be firm and the fields to be as free from water as possible. So even if all of the snow melts by this weekend, the coaches would still need several days of warm temperatures and windy conditions to help dry everything up and reduce the so-called “mush factor” in order for their teams to practice.

“We’re hoping to hopefully have minimal impact,” Oxborough said. “If we get a bunch of snow though, it’s going to take some time to melt and, I don’t know, hopefully it doesn’t delay us more than a week or two. Our opening day is May 4, so hopefully we’ll be fine by then.”

Teams do have the option of practicing indoors at a couple of local school gymnasiums, but that would come at an additional cost to the coaches.

The preference would be to hold the practices outdoors at Northwoods Park.

Brooklyn Park